All posts tagged playstation store

recently, i downloaded the heavy rain demo from the playstation store. i had done my homework, and by all accounts, the game looked good. then i started playing the demo. graphically, it’s one of the best games i’ve seen.

the game play is another issue. it’s so… boring. there’s a few cool elements, like being able to see your characters’ thoughts, and the game seems to make use of the ps3’s motion controls.

i only played the old man investigator, and the young cop. the old man is slow, but plodding along i can understand because he’s old and unfit. he’s trying to look for some hooker’s kid. she’s not cooperative. frankly, i don’t take anything from game characters. if they don’t give you what you want, beat them. if they still don’t give you what you want, try to kill them. this old man though, wow. not in a good way. you get a bunch of dialogue choices that don’t wow me. i got whatever info from this chick, and left. but, the second he leaves the apartment, he’s got a fit of asthma. just then, some tough bastard walks along the hall and forces his way into the apartment and starts fighting with the hooker. he somehow rallies himself though and breaks it up. WTF. we’re honestly expected to believe this old wheezy bastard is going to break up a fight between the hooker and one of the ex-clients? come on.

the young guy was equally boring. what the fuck? he plods too? he went to a crime scene where a murder had happened. blah blah blah. the storyline is a yawn, personally.

maybe i’m being too judgy. i wanted to like it – but i really feel let down. anyone out there have a comment?

is it just me, or is storing games on your ps3 rapidly becoming a pain in the ass? i have a pile of ps3 games, and i’m finding that the more i play, the more i have to scramble to find stuff to delete, to make room for more data. it’s a vicious cycle. i spend way too much time deleting messages, videos, music, and the most painful of all – game data. i wiped out data for both dark sector and saints row 2 over the weekend. possibly, i cried a bit for my 60GB playstation3. it may be backwards compatible, but it is small.

you know, maybe one of the reasons why the ps2 does/continues to do so well is because it’s clever. sure, it’s got an obscene amount of titles [over 1800! wtf! ], but you will never run out of space. there are more memory cards for that system than you can shake a stick at, and you can buy them used for cheap. personally, i miss those days. flash drives are expensive. now, one could argue that the remedy is swapping out a hard drive, but fuck that. it shouldn’t have to come down to shelling out more money for something you already invested in. plus what do you do with the old hard drive? use it as a coaster? sculpt them?

it’d be neat if retailers found a way to help out. you can buy credit for the playstation store, so why not buy storage space? a lot of online backup services offer this. pay a little, save a lot. my vision is to save some of your games, but have an overflow option. forget old age: autosave files will kill you. historically, i’ve been against ‘cloud computing‘, and by association ‘cloud gaming’, but i might have to go over to the dark side. it’s not a perfect solution [i know how much you all care, so i’ll write more on that later] but there’s a lot to be said about unlimited storage space.

bah. i just need something. i can’t be the only one. with all the developments in technology, why can’t a solution arrive? i guess people have other priorities, like gift-wrapping cats.

another multiplayer screwup we are all in shock about. MAG, the gigantic MMO [massively multiplayer online game] shooter from zipper interactive, can’t keep its head above water. when i first heard about this game last year, i was super pumped. i love shooters! one of my gamer buddies brought me back to earth quickly: it supports 256 players… all at once. it’s only online too. we quickly came to the conclusion it was a swift receipe for disaster and hurriedly discussed puppies instead.

fast forward to january 2010: server failures all over! it’s chaos out there in MAG land! the full game is due to be released january 26, 2010, but all this offensive behaviour is just from the public beta. it launched on january 4, and the bloodshed won’t end til january 10, 2010. folks, this is serious shit. these server failures are leaving gamers to barely finish a game, while reports indicate most players are unable to finish a game. how are people going to occupy their time? are they expected to socialize?! play their old titles?

“Another issue is the main game queue is not working for a lot of people. Many people are reporting having to wait 15+ minutes just to get into a game. This is just speculation, but this is probably because everyone keeps getting disconnected (or they just can’t connect at all).”

We all hope the servers will be able to handle the load once they come back online.

News Update – Jan 4 @ 4:00PM est:
Servers are back online. I was able to play 1 round with no problems but now players are still unable to connect to the world server or games. Queue issues persist. Looks like it is going to be a long couple of weeks for the dev team at Zipper Interactive.

News Update – Jan 5 @ 2:00PM est:
The servers are running much better than yesterday. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are stable, but they are improving as time goes on. I think they are getting a wake up call as to how many servers they are going to need for the game’s release. They made the right decision releasing the game to public beta, but I think they should have done it sooner. They may not have enough time to get it running 100% for the amount of people that will be playing it for the first few weeks after release.

now, the public beta is available from the playstation store. while we can’t speculate at this time, we feel that the public health agency of canada would advise against bringing the MAG beta into your homes. think of the children. think of your grandchildren, future or otherwise.

i would be remiss if i didn’t mention some sony gossip: plans to potentially make people pay for the services we have all been loving for free. straight from the tiger woods school of ‘we had everything, then chose to fuck it all up’ learning, rumours have been circulating for a while now. bigwigs are making it their mission to soothe all the children out there [specifically kaz hirai], but it doesn’t seem like it’s going away.

for centuries, happy little sony gamers have been lording it over their equally little xbox counterparts: we get this shit for FREE. so when the system goes down, or the servers are crammed, we’re ok with it. after all, sony has treated us pretty well, and not spun any microsoft bullshit ‘oh but we put that money into development…’ over us.

on the homefront, canadians really haven’t given a shit that we can’t get video and music through the playstation store. ‘fuck it,’ we shrug. ‘we’ll just download it somewhere else. we love this free service anyway and we’re ok with it being the way it is.’

now they want us to PAY for it? come on. all the games are sold promising leaderboards, trophies and all that good shit, so probably not that. are they going to make us play to use the biggest sony joke ever, playstation home?

as you may have deduced from the title of this post, this is not going to be about nintendo. here’s a list of the best downloadable add-ons as seen by sony. apparently you can also see this at home, as the newest ps3 update has a specific store section for this.

now, the list i found was a bit vague at times, so i have taken the [or teh, if i was being a nerd] liberty of including smarmy comments for you. you’re welcome, just doing my job.

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 [i suppose to give gamers who didn’t buy into modern warfare 2 some love?]

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2 [ibid]

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 3 [seriously? make them buy the next goddamn game.]

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Variety Pack [wasn’t this just released? i’m almost insulted.]

ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a winner on our hands. a whopping 1.2 million units of sony computer entertainment’s [and sucker punch’s] infamous have been sold. that’s since october 2009. did i mention there was an official price drop? yeah. sony wants to get a copy into your hot, little hands so bad it knocked about $35 off the price.

mmmm. so much Infamous news to cope with

in other infamous news, there’s been some developments. there’s some free downloadable content in the playstation store, giving you some a hot ‘Gigawatt Blades’ Super Power. whatever the fuck that means i am personally not sure. it came out december 10, and i downloaded it shortly thereafter. didn’t get around to playing the game after, but after poking around the dlc seems to be just a sexy pair of skates. barf.

anyway, enough of that. there are rumours of a sequel – apparently around october 2009, david sullivan stole jason cottle‘s thunder [probably also job] by twittering he was being considered for the role of cole in the infamous sequel. how terribly gauche. i feel it’s safe to say that i don’t think these two will ever be friends.

finally: infamous might be getting its own movie. you read that right: an infamous ps3 game movie. that rumour surfaced in july 2009. they claim it’ll be made by sony pictures [i’m on my ass in shock] and the script is by sheldon turner, who was responsible for ‘the longest yard’ remake. we can only stay tuned and hope this glory comes to fruition.